THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS

To give some idea of the political landscape of Arthur’s Britain, it might be helpful to examine some of the “Men of the North” and the kingdoms they controlled.

The most northern of these kingdoms was, of course, the ancient territory of the Votadini or Gododdin, which in the Roman period is believed to have stretched from the Wear or the Tyne through Northumberland and the Lothians to the Forth.

The term ‘Lothian’ appears to have been of Dark Age origin, which as we have seen stands for an original Lleudiniawn, ‘Place of the Fort of [the god] Lugus’. There is an eponymous king recorded in the Life of St. Kentigern called Leudonus, i.e. Lleuddun, and his kingdom in Welsh was known as Lleuddunion. He was supposed to have ruled from Traprain Law, which was earlier called Dunpelder, the ‘Fort of the Spear (shaft)’.

[However, from Alan James: "On Lothian, Haycock rejects Lugudunum - cf my BLITON note:

Lothian  CPNS pp. 101-3  ? + -dīn- + suffix -*jānā- > -jǭn > -iawn: this etymology, yielding neoBrittonic *löw’ðïnjǭn > Middle Welsh Lleud[d]iniawn (as recorded circa 1170) was first proposed anonymously in Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (1924) at p xviii (see Wilkinson, 2004, at pp. 83-4 n46), and subsequently by Koch in YGod(K) at p. 131. It would imply an unlocated *Lugudūnum somewhere in the region, possibly the Lugudunum recorded in the Ravenna Cosmography (see above). However, the suffix 'would seem to rule out' such a formation, Haycock 2013, p. 31 n45, which see with ibid. pp. 10, 11, 32 n46, and 34 n59, on the occurrence of this name in the 12th cent. 'Gwalchmai's Boast'.

Haycock, Marged, (2013) 'Early Welsh Poets Look North', 2nd Anderson Memorial Lecture, in Woolf, Alex, ed.  Beyond the Gododdin, pp. 9 – 40.]

In the late 6th century, the king of the Votadini was, apparently, one Mynyddog Mwynfawr. He is said to have ruled from Din Eidyn or Edinburgh and was the son of a certain Ysgyran, and probably succeeded Clydno Eidyn. The Gododdin poem implies that the Britons who fought the English at Cattraeth assembled at Mynyddog’s court at Edinburgh. Clydno Eidyn, in turn, was the son of Cynfelyn son of Dyfnwal Hen. Myynyddog is also given the epithet ‘Eidyn’ meaning, undoubtedly, ‘of Eithne’. Once again, Eidyn is likely the British form of Eithne, mother of the god Lugh in Irish tradition.

Pabo Post Prydain, the ‘Pillar of Britain’, is the son of Ceneu son of Coel Hen, both famous chieftains of the North. Pabo is spelled Pappo in the genealogies appended to the HB. Coel Hen’s name is believed to be preserved in Kyle in Ayreshire.

A son of Pabo is Dunod Fwr, who is probably the chieftain who fought against the Rheged princes in Erechwydd, which itself is usually placed somewhere in Cumbria. We may relate this Dunod to Dent in NorthWest Yorkshire, his lands here being termed the ‘regio Dunotinga’, kingdom of the descendents of Dunod. From John Morris’s The Age of Arthur:

“DENT: regio Dunotinga is one of four districts of north-western Yorkshire overrun by the English in or before the 670s, Eddius 17 [Life of Wilfrid]. The passage is overlooked in EPNS WRY 6, 252, where the early spellings Denet(h) are rightly related to a British Dinned or the like, and Ekwall’s derivation from a non-existent British equivalent of the Old Irish dind, hill, is properly dismissed. EPNS does not observe that Dent was, and still is, the name of a considerable region, and tha thte village is still locally known as Dent Town, in contrast with the surrounding district of Dent…. Regio Dunotinga plainly takes its name from a person named Dunawt, Latin Donatus, as does the district of Dunoding in Merioneth, named from another Dunawt, son of Cunedda.”

The regio Dunotinga was associated with the Ribble and other places in the north of the West Riding. As the Dent River is a tributary of the upper Lune in Lonsdale, and Upper Lonsdale seems to have been within the canton of the ancient Carvetii tribe, it is likely that Dunot was himself descended from the ‘People of the Stag’. The Carvetii (see Cerwyd/Cerwydd below) ruled over what we now think of as Cumbria and adjacent areas.

Bran son of Ymellyrn is associated with both Dunawt of Dent and Cynwyd of Kent (see below for the Cynwydion).  The patronymic here is transparently from Old Norse a, river, plus melr, sandbank, identifying his region with Ambleside in Cumbria just to the west of the River Kent. 

Another son of Pabo’s is Cerwyd or Cerwydd, who is otherwise completely unknown. This name is transparently an eponym for the Carvetii tribe. We have just seen that Dunod’s Dent seems to have been a part of the territory once covered by this ancient tribal kingdom.

The form Cerwydd as a direct eponym for the Carvetii is not possible; we would need Cerwyd for an exact linguistic correspondence. However, as Cerwydd means ‘stag-like one’, we can say with a fair degree of certainty that he does represent the People of the Stag.

As for Pabo, father of Dunod, we may situate him at Papcastle (Pabecastr in 1260), the Derventio Roman fort in Cumbria. Pap- is thought to be from ON papa, papi, for ‘hermit’, but this seems an unlikely name for a ‘ceaster’. Instead we should look to early W. pab, ‘pope’, i.e. papa, pl. pabeu, and Llanbabo church of St. Pabo in Anglesey. Pabo's Chester would seem to do quite nicely. We could then locate Pabo within the Carvetii kingdom of his sons Cerwyd/Cerwydd and Dunod.

I would add that Pabo’s epithet ‘Post’ or ‘Pillar’ is possibly a reference to the Solway, which is believed to be from OScand. sul, ‘pillar or post’, and vath, ‘ford’. It has been proposed, quite reasonably I think, that the pillar or post of the Solway is the Lochmaben Stone at Gretna Green. A ‘papa’ or ‘father’ of the post/pillar named for the Divine Son Mabon makes for an interesting combination of place-name elements!

However, it is true that the Papcastle fort is not on the Solway.  The name of the Roman period fort here – Derventio – was named for the river Derwent, the ‘oak-river’ or ‘river in an oakwood’.  As the oak was a very sacred tree to the early Celts, it is possible the ‘post’ or ‘pillar’ that gave its name to Pabo was an oaken one and thus an indirect reference to the place-name.

Sawyl Benisel ("Low-head"), yet another son of Pabo, is dated c. 480 CE. On the Ribble, not far south of ‘regio Dunotinga’, is a town called Samlesbury. The place-name expert Eilert Ekwall has Samlesbury as ‘Etymology obscure’, but then proposes OE sceamol, ‘bench’, as its first element, possibly in the topographical sense of ‘ledge’. A.D. Mills follows Ekwall by saying that this place-name is probably derived from scamol plus burh (dative byrig). However, sceamol/scamol is not found in other place-names where a ‘ledge’ is being designated. Instead, the word scelf/scielf/scylfe, ‘shelf of level or gently sloping ground, ledge’ is used.

I would suggest as a better etymology for Samlesbury: ‘Sawyl’s fort’. There are, for example, Sawyl place-names in Wales (Llansawel, Pistyll Sawyl, now Ffynnon Sawyl). Sawyl is the Welsh form of the name Samuel.

Dr. Andrew Breeze of Pamplona, a noted expert on British place-names, agrees with this proposed etymology:

“I feel sure you are right. The form surely contains the Cumbric equivalent of Welsh _Sawyl_<_Samuel_. Your explanation of this toponym in north Lancashire is thus new evidence for Celtic survival in Anglo-Saxon times.”

Now that we have placed Pabo and his descendents on the map, we need to investigate what has been explained as an intrusion on their pedigree.

An Arthwys and his father Mar are both inserted into the Pabo genealogy. Instead of Pabo son of Ceneu son of Coel Hen, we have Pabo son of Arthwys son of Mar son of Ceneu, etc. This same Arthwys is made the grandfather of a Cynwyd of the tribal group known as the Cynwydion (of the Kent river in Cumbria - Kent being from Kennet, which in Welsh is Cynwyd), of Gwenddolau of Carwinley (Caer Gwenddolau just a little north of Carlisle) and father of Eliffer (Eleutherius) of York. Eliffer in another pedigree is the son of Gwrgwst Ledlum (Fergus Mor of Dalriada) son of Ceneu son of Coel Hen.

Mar is made the father of Lleenog, father of Gwallog of the kingdom of Elmet (a small kingdom centreed about Leeds, probably from Welsh elfydd, ‘world, land’), but in another pedigree it is Maeswig Gloff, i.e. Maeswig ‘the Lame’, who is father of Lleenog.

Mar looks to be an attempted eponym for the Mor/Mer-ingas of Westmorland, although as the name is also written 'Mor', this could be yet another reference to Fergus Mor.  Fergus otherwise occurs in the early genealogies of the Men of the North as Gwrwst Ledlwm, the father of Meirchiaun Gul of Cumbria and Eliffer Gosgorddfawr of York.  

Maeswig Gloff (Masguic Clop in the Harleian genealogies) was, presumably, a ruler of the vast Plain or Vale of York. His name appears to be from *Magos-vicos, ‘Fighter of the Plain’. However, I should not neglect to point out that the Roman fort at Burrow Walls, Workington, Cumbria, was named Magis, formed from British *magos, ‘plain’. Papcastle of Pabo is on the Derwent only a few miles east of Magis, itself at the mouth of the same river.

The name Arthwys has frequently been brought into connection with that of Arthur/Artorius. This name is from Arth-, ‘Bear’, + –(g)wys(*weyd-so- 'knowledgeable'), which in the early period was comparable to Irish fios, ‘knowledge’. Hence he was the ‘Knowledgeable Bear’. Dr. Andrew Breeze has made a case for the river Irthing containing the word Arth, ‘bear’. From his article “Celts, Bears and the River Irthing” (Archaeologia Aeliana, 5^th series, volume XXXII):

Irthing, which has early forms Irthin, Erthina, and Erthing, would also make sense as ‘little bear’, with a Cumbric diminutive suffix corresponding to Middle and Modern Welsh –yn (Old Welsh –inn), as in defynyn ‘droplet’ from dafn ‘drop’ or mebyn ‘young boy’ from mab ‘boy’.  As the th of Arth is pronounced like that of English bath, but that of Irthing like that of brother, the process of voicing here would take place after borrowing by English, not before.”

The claim has been made that Arthwys should be Athrwys, as this spelling is found in later sources. The argument would seem to have some support as the name Athrwys is found in Wales. If it was Athrwys, the first element would be W athro 'teacher' (< PIE *pH2tro:w- ‘uncle’). However, as Professor Ranko Matasovic has pointed out to me via private correspondence, while we have plenty of examples of Arth- or bear names, other than the presumed Athrwys, we have absolutely no other extant names containing athro.

[NOTE: Arthwys can be interpreted as a territorial designation, rather than strictly as a personal name. Welsh has a -wys suffix, which derives from Latin –enses.  A discussion of this suffix can be found in John T.  Koch's Celtic Culture, among other sources.  Regedwis, for example, is 'people of Rheged' - or maybe better, 'inhabitants of Rheged'. The entry for -wys (1) in the University of Wales Dictionary confirms it as a Latin borrowing and as a nominal plural ending, giving the examples of Gwennwys, Lloegrwys and Monwys. Could –wys, then, be a suffix used for the people who live on a certain river?  Like on an Arth or Bear River?

When I put this question to Dr. Delyth Prys of the place-name experts at The University of Wales, Bangor, he replied: “I've no independent evidence for this, but river names are sometimes used as the name for a more general area and by extension it could be the people of the Arth (area)." Now, if the Irthing is not from ir-t, but from erth/arth +inga (belonging to, not descendents of), it would be the 'tun belonging to Arth' or belonging to the bear.  But if the river itself were originally the Arth/Erth, then the tun itself would belong to the river.

Alan James of BLITON states that river-names can sometimes be also the names of adjacent regions, or - probably more correctly - some river-names may have originally have been regional names (or vice versa). This may have been the case with Llwyfenydd/ Lyvennet of Urien. The kind of river-names that seem to double as district names tend to be ones that refer to local terrain, etc., but that may just because such topographical names are more obviously linked to the area. Again, rivers were sometimes boundaries, but they're as likely to flow through a territory perceived as one as to divide such a territory into two. A hypothetical Arth/’Bear’ region could have included both the Irt and the Irth of Irthington, not necessarily been bounded by them.]

According to the early Welsh genealogies, Gwenddolau ('white dales'), who belonged at Carwinley in Cumbria, was the son of Ceidio.  Ceidio as a name is a hypocoristic form of a longer two-part name that begins with *cad-, 'battle.'

Recently, I thought to look for a relic of Ceidio in place-names.  As he was a son of the Arthwys who stands for the *Artenses or People of the Bear of the Irthing Valley, my attention was caught at first by Powcady between the King Water and the Cambeck not far from the Camboglanna Roman fort at Castlesteads.  Early forms for Powcady were late: Pocadie, Pokeadam.  But Alan James proposed that this contained a typical pol- element 'pool in a stream, stream' plus cad-, 'battle', plus perhaps a -ou plural suffix.  I wondered if it could instead contain the name Ceidio/Keidyaw/Ceidiaw.

Powcady is at a footbridge over Peglands Beck, which was earlier known as Polterkened. See

https://spns.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Alan_James_Brittonic_Language_in_the_Old_North_BLITON_Volume_II_Dictionary_2019_Edition.pdf

As Polterkened (or at least Kened, as polter may have been added later) was this stream's ancient name, a *pol- of a different name on the same watercourse would designate a pool in this location.  I asked Alan James whether this could be 'Ceidio's Pool.'  He responded:

"Poll Ceidio isn't impossible, though it should be lenited *Geidio (but lenition is a bit iffy in Cumbric pns). So, no, not impossible."

I would very tentatively propose, therefore, that the name Ceidio son of Arthwys/Artenses is preserved at Powcady.

Over the years, I've explored different possibilities for the location of the famous Armterid/Arfderydd battle, at which Merlin (Myrddin) went made and fled into the Caledonian Wood.  But only recently have I been able to settle on one particular site.

The place was called ‘Weapon-fierce’ (courtesy Andrew Breeze; https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/jlo/vol2/iss1/1/), i.e. Arm-terid or Arf-derydd.  According to Breeze, this was the name for the stream at Carwinley which marked the northern boundary of Arthuret parish.

As for fixing the site of the battle, we have one possible clue.  In “Lailoken and Kentigern" Carwinley or Caer Gwenddolau is called Carwannock and the battle is said to take place between the latter and the Lidel on a plain. I had proposed that -wannock was either derived from Cumbric gwaun, “high and wet level ground, moorland, heath; low-lying marshy ground, meadow” or might be a hypocoristic form of Gwenddolau. Gwen-ddolau itself looks to be a place-name, as it means, literally, “White dales” (dol being “meadow, dale, field, pasture, valley”). Brythonic place-name expert Alan James confirmed both possibilities for me:

“The meaning of derivatives of *wāgnā in the Brittonic languages is primarily ‘level, marshy ground’, whether upland or lowland; developments include gwaun ‘a meadow’ in Welsh, goon ‘downland, unenclosed pasture’ in Cornish. Br -āco-/ā-> -ǭg is an adjectival and nominal suffix, indicating ‘being of the kind of’, ‘association with’, ‘abounding in’, the stem-word. It occurs very widely in river-names, hill-names and other topographic names. It 's not diminutive, though in hypocoristic personal names like Gwennock it might be affectionate.”

Thus Carwannock and Carwinley are the same place.  This is confirmed, in fact, by the primary sources. In the St. Kentigern VITA fragment (Titus A. XIX ff. 74-75b) the language is in campo qui est inter Lidel et Carwannock (see https://www.persee.fr/doc/roma_0035-8029_1893_num_22_88_5789 ). But according to the 15th century edition of John of Fordun the battle took place in campo inter Lidel et Carwanolow situato (Ifor Williams quoted in PNCmb I p51 n1).

But what of modern Arthuret, which is considerably to the south of Carwinley?

Derydd as similar to L. torridus, dried up, also Irish tioradh, drying, tíraid, dries.

Guess what is a tributary of the Hall Burn IN ARTHURET PARISH?

THE DRY BECK (see http://www.lakesguides.co.uk/html/lgaz/lk00252.htm).

Dry Beck in Arthuret Parish

So this stream is Terydd/Derydd - probably the original name for the entire Hall Burn, which flows past Arthuret proper.

The question is then what is Arm-/Arf-.  Although almost all sources had Ard- and not Arf-, I'm aware of the lectio difficilior requirement here.  So what is Arf-/Arm-?

There is Gaelic airm, 'place', and that has been proposed, but it's really not very convincing, given its total absence otherwise in Britain.  From Alan James' BLITON:

*arμ (f?)

Early Celtic *armā- > Br *armā-; O-MIr, G airm.

‘Place, location, whereabouts’.

Proposed by I. Williams, see PNCmb pp. 51-2, in [bellum] Armterid AC573 (in London, BL MS

Harley 3859). There is no other evidence for the word in P-Celtic, nor does the Goidelic form

seem to occur to as a place-name generic. If a Brittonic cognate had existed and survived, it 

would have fallen together as it did in Goidelic with adopted Lat arma ‘arms’ (Welsh arf). See

Arthuret Cmb, below.

a2) The river-name Armet Water MLo (Stow), PNMLo p. 75, SPN² p. 241, and the territorial

name Armethe Stg (Muiravonside), PNFEStg p. 38, could formally be + -ed if adopted early

enough by Northumbrian Old English speakers to retain –m- (LHEB §§98-100, pp. 486-93);

however, such a formation would be be unlikely to involve *arμ. An early hydronymic element

is possible, see ERN p. 149 (discussion of R. Erme Dev), and *ar in river-names.

b2) Arthuret Cmb PNCmb pp. 51-2 ? + -*tērïδ. Arthuret church stands on a prominent bluff

overlooking the Border Esk about 2 miles south of Longtown. Williams’s identification of the

battle-site with Arthuret is plausible, given the strategic location, though it should not be regarded

as certain. On the burgeoning of stories surrounding this battle in mediaeval Welsh literature, see

Rowlands (1990) pp. 109-14. See also discussion of Carwinley under cajr.

I have long maintained that the Arm-/Arf- spelling is a poetic development and does not represent a real place-name.  After extensive discussion with Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales, I've gotten agreement on this point.  In addition, I had proposed the Arderydd "variant" might derive from either Ar-derydd, 'in front of the Derydd' or Ardd-derydd, 'the height of the Derydd.'  This last seemed the most reasonable to me, as the rotwyd or rhodwydd Arderys [sic] was a circular, earthen dyke fortification guarding a ford.  This is discussed by Bromwich in her Triads and by Sir Ifor Williams in a note to his Taliesin edition. At Arthuret this fortification was atop the hill adjacent to the ford over the River Esk. 

- Rachel Bromwich

The actual origin of rhodwydd is debated.  Ifor Williams thought it from rhawd + gwydd.  But I think the GPC now has it right, with rhod from the word for 'wheel', and gwydd being the same as in gwydd4, 'tumulus', cf. gwyddfa, 'height, eminence, promontory.'

Here is what Dr. Rodway had to say on the subject:

"I think the best explanation is *Ardd-derydd < *Ardo-torridus - both variants can derive from this, and there would be good motivation for alteration in order to avoid a car crash of dentals following syncope of the composition vowel.  (1) Arfderydd: dd and f sometimes interchange, e.g. afanc ~ addanc.  (2) Arderydd fricatives can be lost after r in post-syncope consonant clusters.  Analogy could have played a part in both forms - as it was famous as the site of a battle, arf 'weapon' might have seemed appropriate, and for Arderydd we have plenty of place-names containing ar 'in front of, opposite', e.g. Arfon, Arberth etc."

Thus the location of the Arderydd battle was the 'dry' stream at Arthuret.  

For the best discussion of the actual fortification at Arthuret, consult W.F. Skene's NOTICE OF THE SITE OP THE BATTLE OF ARDDERYD OR ARBERYTH

(https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_006/6_091_098.pdf):

"About a mile south from Longtown is the church and rectory of Arthuret, situated on a raised platform on the west side of the river Esk,which flows past them at a lower level; and south of the church and parsonage there rise from this platform two small hills covered with wood, called the Arthuret knowes. The top of the highest, which overhangs the river, is fortified by a small earthen rampart, enclosing a space nearly square, and measuring about 16 yards square." 

Do note, however, that Skene was wrong to look towards the Moat of Liddel as the actual site of Arderydd.  Liddel Strength, as it is otherwise known, is over a kilometer north of the northern boundary of Arthuret parish and is, needless to say, nowhere near the Dry Beck.

Incidentally, Dreon son of Nudd, another famous hero at the Arthuret battle, is likely a son of the Nudd mentioned on an early 6^th century tombstone at Yarrow Kirk. 

Not far west of the Carwinley of Gwenddolau on the coast of Galloway is the fort of Caerlaverock. The name of this fort is referred to in Welsh tradition as the ‘Lark’s Nest’ and it is said to have been the cause of the Battle of Arfderydd (Arthuret). But ‘lark’ is itself either a mistake or pun for the personal name Llywarch, in this case Llywarch Hen son of Elidir Lydanwyn. Llywarch was first cousin to Urien Rheged. Caerlaverock is, therefore, Caer Llywarch.

There is another interesting reference to a place in Cumbria that I might mention.  In the ‘Cambridge’ group of Historia Brittonum MSS., an interpolation tells us that Vortigern is said to have built “Guasmoric near Carlisle, a city which in English is called Palme castre.”  Palme castre has long been erroneously identified with the Old Carlisle Roman fort one mile south of Wigton in the parish of Westward.  There is a double-error in the Historia Brittonum, for Guasmoric itself is not the same place as the Palme castre fort.

Guasmoric must be Gwas Meurig, the “Abode of Meurig or Mauricius.”  This is clearly an attempt at rendering the Gabrosentum Roman fort in Cumbria at Moresby.  According to both Ekwall and Mills, Moresby (Moriceby, Moresceby) is Maurice’s By, Maurice being a Norman name and -by being Old Scandinavian for “farmstead, village, settlement”.  Whether we can propose an original Welsh Meurig underlying Maurice is questionable.  In all likelihood, the interpolation is late and Guasmoric represents Maurice’s By.  If originally a Meurig place-name, this may commemorate the 6th century Meurig son of Idno son of Meirchion, who married a daughter of Gwallog of Elmet. Cynfarch son of Meirchion may have left his name at the Mote of Mark in Dumfries. 

As for Palme castre, this is a place now called Plumpton (Plumton, ‘tun where plum trees grow’; see Ekwall) in Cumbria.  Directly between Plumpton and Plumpton Foot is the Voreda Roman fort.  Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain) list the fort as being “at Old Penrith, Plumpton Wall, Cumberland, beside the river Petteril”.  Voreda means ‘horse’ in British.

As archaeology has shown us, there were two main centres for the Carvetii kingdom. One was the ancient tribal centre near Brougham, the Roman Brocavum, with its triple sacred henges at Eamont. One of these henges is actually called King Arthur’s Round Table and another the Little Round Table. There is evidence in the form of a concentration of inscriptions at Brougham that the primary Carvetii deity worshipped at these henges was a horned god (doubtless a stag, given that Carvetii means ‘People of the Stag’) named Belatucadros.

But there was also an important region called variously Erechwydd or Yr Echwydd, mentioned in connection with Urien, his sons, Gwallog son of Lleenog of Elmet and with Dunod Fwr. No wholly satisfactory identification of Erechwydd has yet been made, but it would seem to be somewhere in or close to Cumbria.

What we do know about Erechwydd is that the Er- prefix is not the definite article yr, even though the name is sometimes wrongly written ‘yr echwyd’ in the poetry, but a form of Ar-, as found in other place-names, e.g. Arfon. Ar- as a prefix originally meant ‘in front of’. But it came to have the senses of ‘upon, on, over, at, in, across from’.

The National Dictionary of Wales defines echwydd as ‘fresh (of water, as opp. to salt); fresh water’. However, although this meaning has been extrapolated from the contexts in which the word is used, no good etymology had yet been proposed.

I asked Graham Isaac if the word could come from ech, ‘out of, from’, plus a form of the Indo-European root *ued, ‘wet’. His response was:

“The etymology echwydd < *exs-wed-yo-, or *exs-ud-yo- (either would probably do it) seems plausible enough.”

The literal meaning would then be the ‘out-water’, but the sense of the word would be simply ‘flowing, fresh water’. Again, the Welsh texts which use this word leave no doubt that we are talking about fresh water emerging from springs or lakes.

So where was Erechwydd/Yr Echewydd, the ‘Place by the flowing, fresh water’? Our clue lies not only in the name of the region, but in the battles fought there between Dunod Fwr of the Dent region and Gwallog of Elmet against Urien’s sons. These engagements are recounted in the Llywarch Hen poetry. Given that Urien Rheged seems to have had his origin in Galloway (where we find Dun Ragit, the ‘Hill-fort of Rheged’), and both Dunod and Gwallog had kingdoms in southeastern Cumbria and just southeast of Cumbria, respectively, the most logical place to seek Erechwydd would be the twin valleys of the Eden and Petteril.

A Roman road led from the south up through the valley of the river Lune right past Dunod’s Dentdale. This road continued north to the Eden Valley. Another Roman road led west from Leeds and joined with the Lonsdale road. Gwallog could have taken this route to the Eden or he could have gone north up Dere Street and then cut over through the Pennines at Stainmore.

The Eden and Petteril Valleys were the heartland of the ancient Carvetii kingdom. Not only did the twin valleys provide the obvious natural route from Carlisle towards Lancaster and York, the area has been shown to have supported a widespread and occasionally dense pattern of rural settlement in the Roman period.

It is even possible that Erechwydd as a regional designation can be more precisely localized within the Eden and Petteril Valleys. The headwaters of the Petteril lie just west-northwest of Eamont. We have already discussed the importance of Eamont with its sacred henges. The river Eamont (a back-formation from the name Eamont itself, from AS ea-gemot, ‘river-meet’, i.e. confluence) and Lowther join at Eamont Bridge and continue for a short distance eastward to the Eden. There was also, of course, a nexus of Roman roads at Eamont.

In my opinion, the Anglo-Saxon place-name ea-gemot/Eamont may overlie an original British Echwydd. Ekwall thought Eamont refers to the confluence of the Eamont and the stream from Dacre, although given the location of the Brougham/Brocavum Roman fort at the juncture of the Eamont and Lowther, it makes much more sense to see this ea-gemot as the confluence of the latter two rivers. If I am right, then Arechwydd was the Eamont area, specifically the land at and around the Brougham fort and the three Carvetii henges. The ‘out-water’ would be a reference specifically to the Eamont, which is formed by the outflow from the Ullswater, the second largest lake in Cumbria.

Just a few miles south-southest of Eamont is the Lyvennet Beck, a tributary of the Eden. This has been identified with the Llwyfenyd over which Urien is said to have been ‘ruler’ (Welsh teithiawc).

In the Strathclyde genealogy proper, we find a Garbaniaun son of [Ceneu son of] Coel Hen. This Garbaniaun has a son named Dumngual Moilmut or Dyfnwal Moelmul.  Both names are, rather transparently, forms of the Dalriadan prince Gabran (Garbaniaun shows a metathesis of Gabran, plus a territorial suffix, as in Gwrtheyrniaun, a region named for Gwrtheyrn/Vortigern; cf. with Garban for Gabran in the Irish Book of Lecan) and his son Domnall.  The Bran son of Dumngual/Domnall of the British pedigree is probably the attested Bran son of Aedan son of Gabran.

I should note that scholars have preferred to see in Garbaniaun the Roman Germanianus.  However, Germanianus is a rare Latin name, and why it should have appeared among the Starthclyde Britons at this time is very hard to explain.  There was a 4th century Prefect of Gaul bearing this name, but no one else of any note, so far as our records tell us.

While we need not take these apparent intrusions of Irish Dalriadan royal names into the British Strathclyde genealogy at face value, they probably do indicate the existence of marriage ties between the Strathclyde Britons and their neighbors, the Dalriadans.  Such marriage ties are hinted at in the records which pertain to the history of Scottish Dalriada (see John Bannerman’s Studies in the History of Dalriada, Edinburgh and London, 1974).

According to the Historia Brittonum, the British name for Bamburgh was either Din (“Fort”) Guayrdi or Din Guoaroy.  The name has remained a problem for philologists and no satisfactory etymology has been proposed.

I would suggest the Welsh word gwyar, ‘blood’, plus an ethnonymic suffix. In this case, Gwyar is a proper name, possibly the mother of the famous Arthurian hero Gwalchmai. Alan James has informed me that the medial syllable would have been syncopated, so we could expect a form such as *Gwyardi.  This fits Guoaroy better than, say, Welsh gwaered, ‘declivity, downward slope.” In the case of Guoaroy, the 'o' could be a miscopying of 'ꝺ', 'insular d'.

Din Gwyardi, the ‘Fort of the People of Gwyar.’

William of Malmesbury said that Gwalchmai had been buried at Ros (Rhos) in Wales.  This may be a relocation for Ross Low at Bamburgh. 

The Welsh Triads place Gwalchmai’s grave on the Parret in Somerset, but this is doubtless because Gualganus, a form of his name, was wrongly linked to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Cenwalh, who fought the British at that river.

JOSEPH/ZAPHNATH PANEAH: PROPOSING A NEW ETYMOLOGY AND PLACING JACOB'S SON IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Pharaoh Merenptah Making an Offering to the Goddess Anat,

on a Column from Heliopolis

THE NAME ZAPHNATH

There have been many proposed etymology for the Egyptian name of the Biblical Joseph.  None have been particularly attractive.  Nor have any of them allowed us to either identify Joseph with a known historical entity or, at the very least, find his proper place in history (as opposed to the role he plays in religious tradition).

A good discussion of the primary attempts to find a solid derivation for Zaphnath (I am not that interested in Paneah, for a reason I will discuss below) can be found here:

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j27_3/j27_3_58-63.pdf

The author, an Egyptologist who applies chronological revisionism to Egyptian history, dispenses with the old ideas for Zaphnath and then offers his own alternative etymology.  Unfortunately, as the author himself notes, his makign Zaphnath out to be Egyptian ḏf3wn‘ty presents us with a unique title for a rank that is otherwise very well known by formulaic titles of long-standing.  This fact sets off alarm bells for me.

Another site which discussed Zaphnath's linguistic origin is this one:

https://theloveofgod.proboards.com/thread/4668/josephus-antiquities-books-samson-solved?page=2

There we learn of Julia Blum's theory that the name is wholly to be derived from the Hebrew.  Alas, the words she chooses to represent Zaphnath do not make a coherent name.

Most Egyptologists do not want to tackle this problem - not with the proverbail ten-foot pole.  And this is because the question is weighted with the bias of the faithful.  Many also admit that there may be several possible solutions to the name Zaphnath, and they are reluctant, therefore, to hazard even an educational guess.

I would like to go about solving the mystering in a different way.  I wish to begin with Joseph's Egyptian wife, Asenath.  It has often been remarked that it is curious that last element of both her and her husband's names seem to be identical.  So I decided to start with that.

Current thinking on the meaning of the name Asenath is well-presented on pp. 85-6 of this source:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hTZKAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=egyptian+nes+she+belongs&source=bl&ots=PAV-_IHicB&sig=ACfU3U0tKf87YI8Jg_Oyh1UGby1MkSzu5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDtqKapOT2AhWqJTQIHUBwDeYQ6AF6BAgMEAM#v=onepage&q=egyptian%20nes%20she%20belongs&f=false

The author there gives the forms New-neit, 'she belongs to (the goddess) Neit', with elision of initial n, giving Es-neit.  He also lists Ius-en-Neit.  Both ideas are justifiably discounted.  He settles for Ius-n-ites, 'she belongs to her father', because Neit names would not be expected to occur at Heliopolis, which is where Asenath belonged.  According to Wilkinson in THE COMPLETE GODS AND GODDESSES OF ANCIENT EGYPT,

"Anat is first attested in Egypt towards the end of the Middle Kingdom, but she seems to have been favoured by the Hyksos during their period of rul­ership in Egypt (one of whose kings took the name Anat-her), and by Ramessid times Anat was estab­lished as a fairly important goddess in the Delta region."

It is rather amazing that the author of that study did not think of the goddess Anat, a Canaanite deity, who was worshipped in Heliopolis.  Why, I wondered, could we not have Ius-n-'nt, 'she belongs to Anat', for Asenath?

For more on Anat in Egypt, I here quote liberally from THE DICTIONARY OF DEITIES AND DEMONS IN THE BIBLE:

"Evidence for Anat in Egypt has been collected by J. LECLANT (1973:253-258; add the Memphite bowl published by D. B. REDFORD in the same year [1973:36-49]), whose article is a necessary corrective to BOWMAN'S (1978:223-259) generally wellinfonned discussion. The available evidence indicates that Anat made her debut in Egypt in conjunction with the Hyksos (for Sinai. see M. DUKSTRA & I. BRIGGS, Proto-Sinaitic Sinai 527- A Rejoinder, BN 40 [1987] 7-10). and she continued to be worshipped in Egypt into the Greek and Roman eras. What follows is a selective rather than comprehensive presentation of the Egyptian evidence. The inscriptions. stelae and statuary of Ramesses II provide the earliest sustained body of evidence for Anat in Egypt (LECLANT 1973:253-254 and nn. 5- 15; BOWMAN 1978:225-234). Ramesses regularly calls her the Mistress or Lady of (the) Heaven(s) in the context of claiming Anal's support in battle and legitimation of his right to 'universal' rule. It is in this context that he claims a mother/son relationship with her (cf. the royal ideology of Pss 2:7-9; 89:10-11.21-28; 110:3). Also in the context of an assertion of Ramesses' prowess in battle he is called mhr of Anat, most likely to be translated "suckling" on the basis of  an Egyptian etymology rather than "soldier" on the basis of an Ugaritic etymology. He had a hunting dog named "Anat is Protection" and a sword inscribed "Anat is Victorious". In short. the picture that emerges is remarkably consistent with what we know of Anat from the Ugaritic texts. With regard to Anat's alleged sexual activity and procreativity. papyrus Chester Beany VII can no longer be rallied as evidence. Prior to its collation with an unnumbered Turin papyrus (A. ROCCATI. Une legende egyptienne d'Anat. REg 24 [1972] 154-159) Anal's name was read into the lacuna that named -Seth's sexual partner. The Turin papyrus demonstrates that it is The Seed. not Anal. who copulates with Seth. Two other texts (Chester Beany I=The COlllendings ofHorus and Seth and Harris Magical Papyrus 111) which are typically cited as evidence of Anal's sexual activity and procreativity are amenable to other interpretations (\VALLS 1992:145-146. 149-152). Even if it should be undoubtedly established. however. that Anat is portrayed as sexually active/reproductive in Egyptian mythology. the Egyptian evidence should not automatically be used as a basis for reconstructing Anal's persona in northwest Semitic mythology (WALLS 1992: 144-145). With regard to the contention that Anat and Astarte are not always distinguished from one another. Anat and Astarte arc indeed sometimes paired in Egyptian sources but perhaps this is because both were originally foreign goddesses from an Egyptian point of view. and so they could both. under certain circumstances, signify similar things. For example. in magical texts both arc invoked as protection against wild animals and to ward off demons. 'logical' functions for goddesses who are at the same time both familiar/assimilated into Egyptian mythology and strange/of foreign origin. This is not to say, however. that their identities had been completely merged. To my knowledge. for pre-Hellenistic times. only the Winchester relief. which depicts a single goddess but names three (Qudshu, Astarte and Anat) provides possible evidence for the actual merging of northwest     Semitic goddesses in Egypt. According to I. E. S. EDWARDS (A Relief of QudshuAstarte-Anath in the Winchester College Collection, JNES 14 [1955] 49-51 and pUll), who originally published the relief, it is of unknown provenance and peculiar in a number of ways. His overall evaluation is that the piece departs from strict convention both representationally and textually, which he interprets as an indication that "the piece was the work of an artist who did not belong to the orthodox school and who was not completely familiar with the Egyptian script" (ibid., 51). The present whereabouts of the relief is, according to collection's curator, apparently unknown (5. WIGGINS, The Myth of Asherah: Lion Lady and Serpent Goddess, UF 23 [1991] 387). Finally, mention should be made of evidence from Aramaic texts in Egypt. The DN Anat may be a component in two DNs at Elephantine, 'NTYHW AND 'NTBYT'L."

While some doubt was once cast on whether Heliopolis was controlled by the Hyksos, it is now generally accepted that such was the case.  Indeed, we have literally evidence supporting the contention:

https://www.thetorah.com/article/we-were-slaves-to-the-hyksos-in-egypt

https://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/tell-el-yahudiya/

There are many good resources available online concerning the Hyksos.  One such is the following:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43074367

So if Asenath is an Anat name, might the same be true of Zaphnath?  After all, we have male names known from Egypt or nearby that contain the element Anat.  Kim Ryholt discusses these (a Hyksos pharaoh and a Hyksos nomarch) and attempts to fix their approximate floruits in his The Political Situation in Egypt During the Second Intermediate Period, C. 1800-1550 B.C:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ANRi7cM5ZwsC&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=%27pr+aper+egyptian+definition&source=bl&ots=dXc2klAj-p&sig=ACfU3U2rfczy0lMfDlSkNMQxf9IiniECdA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjypuHrhtj2AhWwHjQIHbnNBE0Q6AF6BAg6EAM#v=onepage&q=aper&f=false

I would offer for consideration SPN'NT, 'Anat Protects'.  

We have a Punic precedent in the priestess name SPNB'L, 'Baal Protects' (see https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Books/Linguistics/Mega%20linguistics%20pack/Afro-Asiatic/Semitic/Phoenician-Punic%20Grammar%20%28Krahmalkov%29.pdf, p. 35, and https://books.google.com/books?id=M1PUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=%22SPNB%27L%22&source=bl&ots=wYPOs7vvKH&sig=ACfU3U2YXZBKfGD7XsSCdymqddO7itgT_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM8MOmsd32AhXHIDQIHc6KCUsQ6AF6BAgIEAM#v=onepage&q=%22SPNB'L%22&f=false, p. 116), derived from a Semitic word identical with Hebrew tsaphan:

tsaw-fan' a primitive root; to hide (by covering over); by implication, to hoard or reserve; figuratively to deny; specifically (favorably) to protect, (unfavorably) to lurk:--esteem, hide(-den one, self), lay up, lurk (be set) privily, (keep) secret(-ly, place).

As I mentioned above, Paneah need not detain us.  It may be Egyptian or it may be Hebrew.  In either case it does not help us with identifying Joseph or placing him in time.

THE STOLEN CUP AND JOSEPH'S BROTHERS

If I am right and Joseph bears a theophorous name containing the element Anat ('nt), can we at last properly place him chronologically?

I believe so - and quite precisely, in fact.  It has long been suspected that the sons of Jacob, named for Hebrew tribes, were Shasu.  The designation Shasu has been drawn from either Egyptian or from Hebrew:

https://live.jewishexpert.com/shasu

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/8154.htm

What is important for us, of course, is what the Hebrews thought the word meant - and by that I mean the writers of the traditions set down in the Pentateuch.  They would certainly has associated the term with their own word meaning 'to plunder.'

It is at this point that we must bring in the Joseph story episode of the stolen cup.  As presented to us, this is a character or morality test administered by Joseph to his brothers.  But other elements of the story are equally as fascinating.

When Joseph's brothers first come to Egypt for grain, they leave for home with not only grain in their sacks, but the money they had brought to pay for it.  In addition, one of the brothers is left as a hostage, and they are told to bring the youngest brother back with them as an exhange hostage before they can stay and trade.  

In their second trip to Egypt, they bring back the money that had been returned to them, but double it so that they can pay for more grain. Once again, Joseph has their money returned to them in their grain sacks.  He also inserts the silver cup into the sack of the youngest brother.  Revelations ensue, then negotiations, all culminating in Joseph inviting his father and his brothers to come live with him in Egypt.  

What all this is really telling us is simple: Shasu who are threatening Egypt on its borders are being paid off in grain and money in return for them refraining from raiding or taking territory.  We may liken the situation to the Danegeld paid to Vikings in England.  The stolen cup is a folk memory of precious items being stolen from temple complexes (like those of Heliopolis) by "plundering" Shasu.  Truth is, it is the "theft" of the cup that labels Jacob's sons as Shasu.  

And what does the invitation of Jacob's sons to Egypt stand for?  Obviously, the invasion of the Hyksos and their conquest of northern Egypt.  It is probable that the Hyksos pharaoh Yaqub-Har is Joseph's traditional father, Jacob.

JOSEPH'S PHARAOH

With Joseph presiding as vizier for the pharaoh during the Hyksos invasion, and in league with his brethren, the name of his pharaoh is not difficult to determine:  Djedhotepre Dedumose.  There were actually two pharaohs of this name.  Both belonged to the Second Intermediate Period - the time of the Hyksos.  Dedumose is named as the pharaoh of the invasion by Manetho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedumose_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedumose_II

https://pharaoh.se/pharaoh/Dedumose-I

https://pharaoh.se/pharaoh/Dedumose-II

JOSEPH AND OSARSEPH

Manetho identifies Moses with Osarseph, but the Pentateuch is surely correct in linking the latter to Joseph.  According to Russell Gmirkin (p. 211, https://books.google.com/books?id=CKuoAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=manetho+osarseph&source=bl&ots=QzURKLlQe1&sig=ACfU3U0QjQ2Od9L6k4nuS6o6SJebGuZMiQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU2L-Vu-f2AhUNGzQIHVX5CE8Q6AF6BAg6EAM#v=onepage&q=manetho%20osarseph&f=false), "Osarseph substitutes the Egyptian theophoric element Osar (from Osiris) for the Jewish theophoric element Yah."  

In a reverse manner, Moses as a name intentionally omits the Egyptian theophoric element Ra (see my book THE REAL MOSES AND HIS GOD, where I identify Moses with Ramessemperre).

The account of Osarseph as we have it is confused, and conflates different events and personages in Egyptian history.  The pharaoh is identified with Akhenaten (Amenhotep, Greek Amenophis) and the Hyksos occupation of Egypt is clumsily linked with the religious revolution instituted by Akhenaten and the rebellion that followed.  Osarseph as Moses is said to driven from Egypt and this led to the misconception that the Hyksos Expulsion should be equated with the Biblical Exodus.  For more on this, I would kindly refer my readers to From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change by Jan Assmann (https://books.google.com/books/about/From_Akhenaten_to_Moses.html?id=VsjmCwAAQBAJ).

THE BATTLES OF ARTHUR/CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA/CERDIC OF WESSEX (from chapter two of my book THE BEAR KING)

Map Showing Arthurian Locations Discussed in THE BEAR KING

[NOTE: For the argument identifying Cerdic of Wessex with Ceredig/Arthur son of Cunedda, see the relevant chapters in my book THE BEAR KING: ARTHUR AND THE IRISH IN WALES AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND.]

***

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the most famous of Cunedda’s sons was Cerdic (Welsh Ceredig).  This man founded the kingdom of Ceredigion in west Wales.  If we compare the military careers of Cerdic with that of Arthur, some amazing correspondences quickly manifest themselves.

The departure point for our exploration of this subject is a comparison of the relevant chronologies. When making such a comparison, we must bear in mind that the ASC reverse the order of the Gewissei generations.  In other words, Cynric or Cunorix, properly the son of Cunedda, is made to be the son of Cerdic/Ceredig son of Cunedda.  And Ceawlin/Mac Cuilinn/Maquicoline or Cunedda is made to succeed Cynric.  There is good reason to believe, therefore, that some or all of the later Gewissei battles have been temporally displaced.  

To proceed, Cerdic of Wessex appears on the scene (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) in 495 A.D.  His death is marked in 534.

Arthur's floruit is nicely bracketed from some time shortly after the accession of Aesc (ASC) to the kingdom of Kent in 488 (or Octha, according to the Historia Brittonum account) to the time of Ida, who according to the ASC succeeded to the kingship of Northumbria in 547.  The Welsh Annals give Arthur's death at Camlan at c. 537.

We can see that according to the two sources cited, Cerdic and Arthur were near perfect contemporaries.  

Years ago I played around with trying to equate some or all of the battles of Arthur and those of Cerdic of Wessex.  Alas, my knowledge of place-name development and of the languages involved was insufficient to the task.  Having once again brought up the very real possibility that Arthur = Cerdic in my previous blog post here, it occurred to me that I should take a second look at the battles listed in the Historia Brittonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

First, those of Arthur:

Mouth of the river Glein

4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region

River Bassas

Celyddon Wood

Castle Guinnion

City of the Legion

Tribruit river-bank

Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)

Mt. Badon c. 516

Camlann c. 537

And, secondly, those of Cerdic (interposed battles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):

495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)

[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]

Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed

[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]

Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons

Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag

Wihtgarasburh

537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar

As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.'  It is Welsh glân.  However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank.  This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a border, edge, margin, bank.  If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certicesora may be one and the same place.

Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot.  This is a very good possibility for a landing place.  However, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.

Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire.  The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north.  Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.'  Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:

"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."

Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn.  Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum. 

W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river.  We can associate this easily with Certicesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:

“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited excavation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong connections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with communities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]

Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I suspect the Celyddon Wood was plugged in for this site. Celyddon contains the word later found in Welsh as called, ‘hard.’.  

Cerdicesleag or "Cerdic's wood" I would identify with Hardley on Southhampton Water.  I pick this location not only because it originally meant ‘Hard Wood’, but because of the mention of Stuf (= Stub/b) both before and after the Cerdicesleag battle. Hardley is just across Southhampton Water from Stubbington, the settlement of the descendents of Stuf/Stubb.  It is also just across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, which was given to both Wihtgar and Stuf.  

Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium).  Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight.  Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar.  But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English.  /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum.  Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage.  Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.

Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose early forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like.  The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury.  Incidentally, Ceawlin’s Wibbandun of 568 is most likely a hill (dun) in the vicinity of Whipsnade, ‘Wibba’s ‘piece of land/clearing, piece of woodland’ (see Ekwall).  Whipsnade is under 10 kilometers southwest of Limbury and is on the ancient Icknield Way next to Dunstable Downs.

According to Kenneth Jackson (_Once Again A thur's Battles_, MODERN PHILOLOGY, August,

1945), Tribruit, W. tryfrwyd, was used as an a jective, meaning "pierced through", and some-times as a noun meaning "battle". His rendering of traeth tryfrwyd was "the Strand of the Pierced or Broken (Place)". Basing his statement on the Welsh Traeth Tryfrwyd, Jackson said that "we should not look for a river called Tryfwyd but for a beach." However, Jackson later admitted (in The Arthur of History, ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A COLLABORATIVE HISTORY, ed. by Roger Sher-man Loomis) that "the name (Traith) Tribruit may mean rather 'The Many-Coloured Strand' (cf. I. Williams in BBCS, xi [1943], 95).

Most recently Patrick Sims-Williams (in The Ar-thur of the Welsh, THE EARLY WELSH ARTHURIAN POEMS, 1991) has defined traeth tryfrwyd as the "very speckled shore" (try- here being the intensive prefix *tri-, cognate with L.  trans). Professor Sims-Williams mentions that 'trywruid' could also mean "bespattered [with blood]." I would only add that Latin litus does usually mean "seashore, beach, coast", but that it can also mean "river bank". Latin ripa, more often used of a river bank, can also have the meaning of "shore".

The complete listing of tryfrwyd from The Dictionary of Wales (information courtesy Andrew Hawke) is as follows:

tryfrwyd

2 [?_try-^2^+brwyd^2^_; dichon fod yma fwy

nag un gair [= "poss. more than one word here"]]

3 _a_. a hefyd fel _e?b_.

6 skilful, fine, adorned; ?bloodstained; battle,

conflict.

7 12g. GCBM i. 328, G\\6aew yg coryf, yn toryf,

yn _tryfrwyd_ - wryaf.

7 id. ii. 121, _Tryfrwyd_ wa\\6d y'm pria\\6d

prydir, / Trefred ua\\6r, treul ga\\6r y gelwir.

7 id. 122, Keinuyged am drefred _dryfrwyd_.

7 13g. A 19. 8, ymplymnwyt yn _tryvrwyt_

peleidyr....

7 Digwydd hefyd fel e. afon [="also occurs as

river name"] (cf.

8 Hist Brit c. 56, in litore fluminis, quod vocatur

_Tribruit_; 14 x CBT

8 C 95. 9-10, Ar traethev _trywruid_).

Tryfrwyd itself, minus the intensive prefix,

comes from:

brwyd

[H. Grn. _bruit_, gl. _varius_, gl. Gwydd. _bre@'t_

`darn']

3 _a_.

6 variegated, pied, chequered, decorated, fine;

bloodstained; broken, shattered, frail, fragile.

7 c. 1240 RWM i. 360, lladaud duyw arnam ny

am dwyn lleydwyt - _urwyt_ / llauurwyt escwyt

ar eescwyd.

7 c. 1400 R 1387. 15-16, Gnawt vot ystwyt

_vrwyt_ vriwdoll arnaw.

7 id. 1394. 5-6, rwyt _vrwyt_ vrwydyrglwyf rwyf

rwyd get.

7 15g. H 54a. 12.

The editors of GCBM (Gwaith Cynddelw

Brydydd) take _tryfrwyd_ to be a fem. noun =

'brwydr'. They refer to Ifor Williams, Canu Anei-rin

294, and A.O.H. Jarman, Aneinin: Y

Gododdin (in English) p. 194 who translates

'clash', also Jarman, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Tha-liesin,

pp. 36-7. Ifor Williams, Bulletin of the

Board of Celtic Studies xi (1941-4) pp. 94-6 sug-gests

_try+brwyd_ `variegated, decorated'.

On brwydr, the National Dictionary of Wales has

this:

1 brwydr^1^

2 [dichon ei fod o'r un tarddiad a@^

_brwyd^1^_, ond cf. H. Wydd. _bri@'athar_ `gair']

3 _eb_. ll. -_au_.

6 pitched battle, conflict, attack, campaign,

struggle; bother, dispute, controversy; host, ar-my.

7 13g. HGC 116, y lle a elwir . . . y tir gwaetlyt,

o achaus y _vrwyder_ a vu ena.

7 14g. T 39. 24.

7 14g. WML 126, yn dyd kat a _brwydyr_.

7 14g. WM 166. 32, _brwydreu_ ac ymladeu.

7 14g. YCM 33, llunyaethu _brwydyr_ a oruc

Chyarlymaen, yn eu herbyn.

7 15g. IGE 272, Yr ail gofal, dial dwys, /

_Brwydr_ Addaf o Baradwys.

7 id. 295.

7 1567 LlGG (Sall) 14a, a' chyd codei _brwydyr_

im erbyn, yn hyn yr ymddiriedaf.

7 1621 E. Prys: Ps 32a, Yno drylliodd y bwa a'r

saeth, / a'r _frwydr_ a wnaeth yn ddarnau.

7 1716 T. Evans: DPO 35, Cans _brwydr_ y

Rhufeiniaid a aethai i Si@^r Fo@^n.

7 1740 id. 336, _Brwydrau_ lawer o Filwyr arfog.

Dr. G. R. Isaac of The University of Wales, Abe ystywyth, in discussing brwyd, adds that:

"The correct Latin comparison is frio 'break up', both < Indo-European *bhreiH- 'cut, graze'. These words have many cognates, e.g. Latin fr uolus 'friable, worthless', Sanskrit bhrinanti 'they damage', Old Church Slavonic britva 'ra-zor', and others. The Old British form of brwyd would have been *breitos. It is sometimes claimed that there is a possible Gaulish root cognate in brisare 'press out', but there are diffi-culties with that identification.

It may be worth stressing that the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'very speckled' and the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'piercing, pierced' are the same word, and that the latter is the historically pri mary meaning. The meaning 'very speckled' comes through 'bloodstained' from 'pierced' ('bloodstained' because 'pierced' in battle). But I do not think this has any bearing on the argu-ments.

Actually, Tryfrwyd MAY mean 'very speckled', but that is conjecture, not certain knowledge. Plausible conjecture, yes, but no more certain for that."

That "pierced" or "broken" is to be preferred as the meaning of Tribruit is plainly demonstrated by lines 21-22 of the _Pa Gur_ poem:

Neus tuc manauid - "Manawyd(an) brought

Eis tull o trywruid - pierced ribs (or, metaphori-cally, "timbers", and hence arms of any kind,

probably spears or shields; ) from Tryfrwyd"

Tull, "pierced", here obviously refers to Tribruit as "through-pierced".

Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus.  Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.

If I were to look at Tribruit in this light, and provisionally accepted the City of the Legion as Limbury, and Badon as Bath (which the spelling demands, and which appears in a group of cities captured by Cerdic's father Ceawlin/Maquicoline/Cunedda), then the location of the Tribruit/Trajectus in question may well be determined by the locations of Mounts Agned and Breguoin.  These last two battle-sites fall between those of the City of the Legion and Bath, and after that of the Tribruit. 

I decided to take a fresh look at Agned, which has continud to vex Arthurian scholars.  I noticed that in the ASC 571 entry there was an Egonesham, modern Eynsham.  Early forms of this place-name include Egenes-, Egnes-, Eghenes-, Einegs-.  According to both Ekwall and Mills, this comes from an Old English personal name *Aegen.  Welsh commonly adds -edd to make regular nominative i:-stem plurals of nouns (information courtesy Dr. Simon Rodway, who cites several examples).  Personal names could also be made into place-names by adding the -ydd suffix.  –ed1 (see the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru) is the suffix in the kingdom name Rheged. The genitive of Agnes in Latin is Agnetus, which could have become Agned in Welsh - as long as <d> stands for /d/, which would be exceptional in Old Welsh (normally it stands for what is, in Modern Welsh, spelled as <dd>). I'd long ago shown that it was possible for Welsh to substitute initial /A-/ for /E-/.  What this all tells me is that Agned could conceivably be an attempt at the hill-fort named for Aegen.

But what of Mount Breguoin?  Well, I had remembered that prior to his later piece on Breguoin ('Arthur's Battle of Breguoin', Antiquity 23 (1949) 48—9), Jackson had argued (in 'Once Again Arthur's Battles') that the place-name might come from a tribal name based on the Welsh word breuan, 'quern.'  The idea dropped out of favor when Jackson ended up preferring Brewyn/Bremenium in Northumberland for Breguoin. 

So how does seeing breuan in Breguoin help us?

In the 571 ASC entry we find Aylesbury as another town that fell to the Gewissei.  This is Aegelesburg in Old English.  I would point to Quarrendon, a civil parish and a deserted medieval village on the outskirts of Aylesbury.  The name means "hill where mill-tones [querns] were got". Thus if we allow for Breguoin as deriving from the Welsh word for quern, we can identify this hill with Quarrendon at Aylesbury.

All of which brings us back, rather circuitously, to Tribruit.  This can only be the Romano-British Trajectus on the Avon of the city of Bath.  Rivet and Smith locate this provisionally at Bitton at the mouth of the Boyd tributary.  The Boyd runs past Dyrham, scene of the ASC battle featuring Ceawlin which led to the capture of Bath.  

If we accept all this, then we cannot very easily reject Badon as Bath.  In truth, with Bath listed in the ASC entry for 577, and made into a town captured by Ceawlin, we simply are no longer justified in trying to make a case for the linguistically impossible Badbury, such as the one at Liddington Castle in Wiltshire or the Badbury Hill fort near Faringdon.  

The Welsh and “Bath” of the North

It has often been said that the Welsh Caer Faddon is always a designation for Bath in Avon. However, the only medieval Welsh tale to localize Arthur's Badon places it at Buxton in Derbyshire.

I am speaking, of course, of the early Arthurian romance ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’, sometimes considered to be a part of the Mabinogion collection of tales. Rhonabwy is transported back in time via the vehicle of a dream to the eve of the battle of Caer Faddon. Arthur has apparently come from Cornwall (as he is said to return thither after a truce is made; this is almost certainly in this context a folk memory for the Cornovii kingdom, the later Powys) to mid-Wales and thence to Caer Faddon to meet with Osla or Ossa, a true historical contemporary of Arthur who lies at the head of the royal Bernician pedigree.

Here is the entry on Osla from P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

"OSLA GYLLELLFAWR. (Legendary). ‘O. of the Long Knife’. According to the tale of ‘Rhonabwy's Dream’ it was against Osla Gyllellfawr that Arthur fought the battle of Badon (RM 150). He is represented as sending forty-eight horsemen to Arthur to ask for a truce till the end of a fortnight and a month (RM 159, 160). In RM 159 the name is spelt Ossa. The ‘Long Knife’ identifies him as Saxon, and as such he is foisted into the pedigree of Oswald, king of Northumbria, in a late version of Bonedd y Saint (§70+71 in EWGT p.64), where he roughly occupies the place of Ossa, grandfather of Ida king of Bernicia. In this context he is called ‘Offa (or Ossa) Cyllellfawr, king of Lloegr, the man who fought against Arthur at the battle of Badon’, and father of Mwng Mawr Drefydd. It is curious therefore to find Osla Gyllellfawr mentioned as one of the warriors of Arthur's Court in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’. Here it is said that he carried Bronllafn Uerllydan, (‘Shortbroad’). When Arthur and his hosts came to a torrent's edge, a narrow place on the water would be sought, and his knife in its sheath laid across the torrent. That would be a bridge sufficient for the hosts of the Island of Britain and its three adjacent islands and its spoil (WM 465, RM 109-10). Later in the story Osla took part in the hunting of the boar Trwyth. He and others caught him and plunged him into the Severn. But as Osla Big-knife was pursuing the boar, his knife fell out of its sheath and he lost it; and his sheath thereafter became full of water, so that as he was being pulled out of the river, it dragged him back into the depths (RM 140-1). A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY 587 It may be inferred that after the battle of Badon, Osla Gyllellfawr, being defeated, was supposed to have become subject to Arthur and to have served him until he was drowned in the Severn (PCB)."

Arthur is said to progress from Rhyd-y-Groes to Long Mountain and Cefn Digoll (Beacon Ring hillfort).  As far as the text is concerned, Faddon is hard by this location.  Yet we find nothing whatsoever in the region that could possibly be identified with Faddon.  

However, if Rhyd-y-Groes were to be rendered directly into the English, it would be Crossford.  And we find Crossford at a Roman road crossing of the Mersey.  If one continues north from Crossford to Manchester, a Roman road then led straight to the SSE to Buxton.  To me, therefore, it seems obvious that Rhyd-y-Groes is a standard relocation of the original site.

"Stretford proper lies in the south, taking its name from an ancient ford over the Mersey, also called Crosford. Leland about 1535 crossed the Mersey 'by a great bridge of timber called Crossford Bridge.'" (from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp329-335)

While the romance is entirely fanciful, the chronological accuracy in the context of choosing Osla/Ossa is rather uncanny.  Ossa is known in English sources for being the first of the Bernicians to come to England from the Continent. Under his descendants, Bernicia became a great kingdom, stretching eventually from the Forth to the Tees. In the 7th century, Deira – which controlled roughly the area between the Tees and the Humber - was joined with Bernicia to form the Kingdom of Northumbria.

In its heyday, Northumbria shared a border with its neighbor to the south – Mercia – at the River Mersey of ‘Boundary River’. The Mersey flows east to Stockport, where it essentially starts at the confluence of the River Tame and Goyt. The Goyt has its headwaters on Axe Edge, only a half a dozen kilometers from Buxton in the High Peak.

If we allow for the story’s author to have properly chosen Ossa as Arthur’s true contemporary, but to have viewed Northumbria in an anachronistic fashion – i.e. as extending to the River Mersey during Arthur's time – then Ossa coming from Bernicia in the extreme north of England, and Arthur coming from Powys of the Cornovii to the southwest, coming together for a battle at Buxton makes a great deal of sense.

Ossa would have been viewed as engaging in a battle just across the established boundary.

If I am right about this, the Welsh knew of the ‘Bathum’ or Badon that was Buxton and placed Arthur here as the victor in the great battle.  This is an error, of course, for the southern Bath of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 

The Linguistic Argument for Badon as Bath

Badon is a difficult place-name for an unexpected reason. As Kenneth Jackson proclaimed:

"No such British name is known, nor any such stem." [To be briefly mentioned in the context of Badon is the Middle Welsh word bad, 'plague, pestilence, death' (GPC; first attested in the 14th century), from Proto-Celtic *bato-, cf. Old Irish bath. Some have asked me whether this word could be the root of Badon - to which Dr. Graham I. Isaac, of the National University of Ire-land, Galway, responds emphatically, "No, absolutely no. A (modern) W form _bad_ etc. would have been spelt in the W of the ancient period as _bat_ and there can be no connection since _Bad(on)_ is what we find." Other noteworthy Celtic linguists, such as Dr. Simon Rodway of Aberystwyth University, Dr. Richard Coates of the University of the West of England and Professor Ranko Matasovic of the University of Zagreb, agree with Isaac on this point. Matasovic adds: “Professor Isaac is right; since we have references to Badon in Early Welsh sources, the name would have been spelled with –t- (for voiced /d/). The spelling where the letter <d> stands for /d/ and <dd> for the voiced dental fricative was introduced in the late Middle Ages.”]

Graham Isaac has the following to say on the nature of the word Badon, which I take to be au-thoritative.

His explanation of why Gildas's Badon cannot be derived from one of the Badburys (like Liddington Castle, often cited as a prime candidates for Badon) is critical in an eventual identification of this battle site. Although long and rather complicated, his argument is convincing and I have, therefore, opted to present it unedited:

"Remember in all that follows that both the -d - in Badon and the -th- in OE Bathum are pronounced like th in 'bathe' and Modern Welsh - dd-. Remember also that in Old English spelling, the letters thorn and the crossed d are interchangeable in many positions: that is variation in spelling, not in sound, and has no significance for linguistic arguments.

It is curious that a number of commentators have been happy to posit a 'British' or 'Celtic' form Badon. The reason seems to be summed up succinctly by Tolstoy in the 1961 article (p. 145):

'It is obviously impossible that Gildas should have given a Saxon name for a British locality'.

Why? I see no reason at all in the world why he should not do so (begging the question as to what, exactly, is the meaning of 'British locality' here; Gildas is just talking about a hill). This then becomes the chief crutch of the argument, as shown on p. 147 of Tolstoy's article: 'But that there was a Celtic name ‘Badon’ we know from the very passage in Gildas under discussion'.

But that is just circular: ' "Badon" must be "Celtic" because Gildas only uses "Celtic" names'. This is no argument. What would have to be shown is that 'Badon' is a regular reflex of a securely attested 'Celtic' word. This is a matter of empirical detail and is easily tested; we have vast resources to tell us what was and was not a 'Celtic' word. And there is nothing like 'Badon'.

Given, then, that the sources – English and Welsh – agree that Badon is a Bath place-name, and that Celtic and English place-name experts and linguists agree that Badon must be for Bath, I see no reason to continue to consider any of the Badburys as potential candidates for Arthur’s Badon. 

I should mention, in closing, that reason the English name was used is because the British name for Bath contained that of a pagan goddess - Sulis. This would have been considered highly objectionable by Gildas and anyone subsequently writing about Arthur's supposed involvement with the site. Our first reference to Arthur there (HB) has him appearing with Christ on his shield. Thus, the Christian nature of the victory over the pagan Saxons was emphasized.